Thoughts of today.

I'm feeling pretty weird today, my mum would've been 61 today. I'm sad she's gone. And I say it all the time that I miss her so much. I still forget alot of the time that she isn't at the other end of a phone. There are seconds when in my head, I think i'll ring mum. Then... oh no I won't, when my brain slowly kicks into gear.

So I guess today i'm kinda thinking alot about her. Not in a sad way. In the way that makes me smile and laugh. She was funny!

And we have one poorly bunny (Emily) who was up much of the night and one bunny (Ben) who I think is coming down with a stinking cold too... so he will most probably be up alot tonight :(
Just when it's the SoML release at 5am tomorrow morning too...!

5 things...

I got these from Michelle (http://scrapcouture.typepad.com/) So here are my five's...

5 snack I love:

- Crisps
- Pretzels
- Blackcurrant and Liquorice sweets
- Cheese
- ?

5 things on my to do list today (or things I did today)

- Get a new loaf of bread (done)
- Enroll at a new dental surgery (done)
- Blog (half done)
- Tidy up
- Plan things I need to do before my mammoth work session this weekend.

5 things I would do if I were a billionaire

-Buy a nice, huge, gianormous house and one for my sister too.
-Pay for private education for my kids and my sisters kids.
-Buy an unbelievable amount of scrapping supplies :)
-Give a huge amount to the hospitals who have cared for people I have and do love.
- Travel

5 bad habits I have

- Not saving money
- Drink tons and tons and tons and tons of coke
- I like a heap of sleep
- I eat wayyyy too much
- I'm not good early in the morning!

5 places I've lived

- Barrow Upon Soar
- Oadby
- Chessington
- Romford
- Skegness

5 jobs I've had:

- Photographer
- Nanny
- Waitress
- Barmaid
- Customer Service Assistant

I'm adding this one: 5 things that just rock atm:

- Facebook :)
- Scrapping
- My new moby
- Stamps (like acrylic ones, not postage stamps)
- Scrapping kits :) (loving the SoML sneaky peek!)

So, I had a lazzzzzzzzyeee weekend.

We didn't do much on Saturday, apart from go over to Kev's mums. We forgot the huge banoffee pie I had made too ~ so it's banoffee pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner here atm...! And other than that I just relaxed in the evening, got my crop stuff ready and watch CSI New York.

On Sunday I had work in the morning and then went straight to crop. As we are out of printer ink (again!) I decided that for the mo, I am going to just use all the stacks and stacks of old piccies I have. They hold some v.happy memories ~ even if the piccies are pretty crappy (oh, yes they are really crappy!)... And of course they hold some hillarious memories... like the time I went to a wedding and my suit trousers ripped (now, if that happened now... Icould understand it but my bum was tiny, weenie size 12 then) and I wasn't wearing the most bum hugging of pants... yes, just as we got in a cab I heard a rip and felt a huge draft. Hmmm. Embarassing? Very. Did I laugh? Yes, lots. And so did the cab driver and the friends I was with at the time. :) These are the sorts of things I want to include in my scrapping. The story is just so important, right?

So I managed to put together two LO's with my studio calico April kit. (yum!) I will upload later!

It's the little things...

That make you smile.

Like this : http://limegreenbogiegirl.blogspot.com/2008/04/tears-of-laughter.html Scroll down right to the bottom and check out Mr. Elvis. And how weird to get married in your car. Like, what??!! How weird to have Elvis at your wedding.


And this made me giggle... I think I was about 14 at the time. This was half of my life ago. Even if it did makeme smile, it sure made me feel really old too. But not too old as I do remember everyone's names there are two surnames though, for the life of me I cannot remember.

I just had to do the whole cheesey spelling, after all it's the sort of thing you did at school and thought you were super cool, when really you just looked like a complete doofus, spelling like that.
Who am I?? I'm fourth in on the middle row with the specs on.

Remembering

Facebook. I love it. Some how, whenever you go on you always find more faces from your past. I get i'm just too curious to find out what my 'teenage-years' friends are up too.
It makes me all smiley and remisnicent (sp??). Facebook reminds me of some of the people who have influenced my life and made me, me.

I feel a facebook mini coming on... :)

Oh for the love of our youth.

These two songs just let me re-livemy youth. Ever have songs like that? The first reminds me so much of my time at Butlins. You know the kind of cheesey song that comes on and everyone jumps up to dance? Yes, that has to be it.

The second makes me think of a time after my mum died, sad kinda happy times , yes. I just went a little wild again. I have lots of me's, if that makes sense. The wild party thing came back. It's not the song of the time. But a song.

Cheesey as they are, they're happy memories :)

28 Candles, leaks and jabs.

Yesterday was a complete haze of Ben's jab (for his MMR), my birthday ~ although it was pretty stressful yesterday and the fact that at 9:20am; just as we were about to leave for Ben's nurse appointment the shower decided to nearly blow up and exploded water everywhere. So there I was running up and down, trying to turn the water off, calling Kev and grabbing Em and Ben to rush down to the doctors.


Currently the shower is being held together by a 5 pence piece and hopefully tonight we will have it fixed ;)


I am still finishing up the front of my Shimelle project which starts 'properly' on Friday, although I have decided to alter the idea slightly and keep my 'calendar' bit and add a kinda photo collage. So really it's already begun. At the end of each month i'm gonna print out the important/cute pics to be added. I think it'll be a great little project and once a month is 'do-able'. This is going to be one of the pics I use... She is just so cheeky :)

And this week I feel as if I have alot of 'me' time. Wednesday night I have the Wickford crop, Thursday Ali is coming over and on Sunday it's the Basildon crop. It will be kinda cut short as I have work 4 til 9pm so I will be rushing off to work but even so... I'm going to have some much needed free time.

A Quid.

A quid: a pound (or £). A slang term for a unit of our currency. Hope this clears up the past post... Thats the trouble with our own slang and dialects, I have never noticed so much until I worked where I do... that some times I really do sound all 'ooopt norfth' rather than 'dawwwwn saffth' (up north or down south).

And work: Yes, I just finished 14.5 hours today. I am shattered. I also have the best Studio Calico kit talking to me in our dining room. I am too tired to even contemplate it. I did last night finish the Shimelle scrap your day class (found at UKS and www.shimelle.com ~ go join, it's free!) When I say finish, I mean I just stuck all my patterned paper in my calendar. I didn't stick it over the actual calendar though, i'm too much of a calendar freak to be able too. I plan to do a sort of photo collage over the calendar bit. I think that will look pretty cool, as long as I actually manage to keep it up. That means staying power for a whole year. A whole 365 days. Will I? Hmm who knows. I'll try.

Work tomorrow too. Up at 5:30am which is way too early and I always press snooze til gone 5:45am. And then i'm on splits, 6:30am til 10:30 and then 4pm til 9pm. Roll on 9:30pm. Then I can go to bed :)

And Monday... what does that bring? Well, it brings my birthday. A whole year older. Hmmm not sure how I feel about that.

Not quiet.

'Being a girl' and six reasons with piccies to match... the first one is beauty sleep... i'm so lucky both my kids love their beds :)

Oooh you know I brought this top to use it in a LO. I had super cool 'shroom stamps to use and this top just screamed out for them!! :lol: (the little brass love birds were from etsy)

This is the LO using my tool box raid find... loving those huge screws as hinges! And getting slowly through all my eyelets using this paper range!

I know some of the pics still have my table on them but what d'yall think? I enjoyed using photoshop to create these babies ;) But it is time consuming, tweaking photos that is.

Emily went to bed last night with a big girl quilt and no 'bag' (gro bags are still a saviour in our house). She did wake up a little earlier but I think the light mornings had more to do with that. That's it now she really isn't a baby anymore :(

I did a little more work with my SoML kit last night while I watched 'medium' ~ weird huh? What do you make of it??? And started alittle more with my SAGG (Scrapagogo) kit.

Just to make you laugh.

I had this sent to me today by a dear old friend who I used to know when I worked in/near 'the city' (yes, London) It made me laugh so much, although thinking about it some of it is pretty sad but oh, so true. I always used to say to the girls I knew down there that number 9 is V.TRUE... Number 27 made me laugh the most... For those of you who know our capital or who have lived there... happy laughing :)

1. You say "the City" and expect everyone to know which one.
2. You have never been to The Tower or Madame Tussauds but love Brighton
3. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Shepherds Bush to Elephant & Castle at 3:30 on the Friday before a long weekend, but can't find Dorset on a map.
4. Hookers and the homeless are invisible.
5. You step over people who collapse on the Tube.
6. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.
7. You've considered stabbing someone.
8. Your door has more than three locks.
9. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.
10. You call an 8' x 10' plot of patchy grass a garden.
11. You consider Essex the "countryside"
12. You think Hyde Park is "nature".
13. You're paying £1,200 a month for a studio the size of a walk-in wardrobe and you think it's a "bargain".
14. Shopping in suburban supermarkets and shopping malls gives you a severe attack of agoraphobia.
15. You pay more each month to park your car than most people in the UK pay in rent.
16. You pay £3 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28p.
17. You actually take fashion seriously.
18. You have 27 different take-away menus next to your telephone.
19. The UK west of Heathrow is still theoretical to you.
20. You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.
21. Your idea of personal space is no one actually physically standing on you.
22. £50 worth of groceries fit in one plastic bag.
23. You have a minimum of five "worst cab ride ever" stories.
24. You don't hear sirens anymore.
25. You've mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city's air/water quality and what it's doing to your insides.
26. You live in a building with a larger population than most towns.
27. Your cleaner is Portuguese, your grocer is Somali, your butcher is halal,your deli man is Israeli, your landlord is Italian, your laundry guy is Filipino, your bartender is Australian, your favourite diner owner is Greek, the watch seller on your corner is Senegalese, your last cabbie was African, your newsagent is Indian and your local English chippie owner is Turkish.
28. You wouldn't want to live anywhere else until you get married.
29. You roll your eyes and kiss your teeth at the news that someone has thrown himself under a tube train.
30.Your day is ruined if you don't get a copy of Metro on the way to work

Happy :)

I did this last night. My Scrapagogo kit did turn up :) along with a few bits from Angel Crafts too (as I keep saying sassafras is just too cute) Anyhow, I created this LO, I need to print some more piccies out but somehow I had this one that just went perfectly!

Blanket stiching ~ inspired by Karen! Don'tcha just love stiching on LO's??? And I am not a flower person but these just went beautifully with the kit.

Hard to see but I raided my bead stash for some silver wire, little red rocailles and red glass leaves...
And the letters? They were from the SoML bundle I got yesterday... Glitter thickers, who can beat 'em?

Excited? Very!

Firstly thank you for all your comments. Especially the very special Michelle... I read on your sisters blog about the loss of your Uncle. I am sending my thoughts your way honey. Hope you and your family are all ok... (and will be sending Jess' CJ soon too! It came last week!)

This morning the postie has brought kit goodness. Yes, my SoML has arrived! Complete with bam pop alpha stamps (set 2) and a heap of other goodies including a few extra cool freebies, thanks Sara :)




The bad news is that, seens as the postie van has been with one kit it means my Scrapagogo and Studio Calico are not going to come today :( But then that's being greedy, anting them all to come right now!

And I did have some goodness the other day ... Jess' CJ popped through the letter box! So yesteray evening I set about my LO for it. I thought it'd be easier than it was... hmmmm. It's coming along!


And Emily is obsessed, yes really stark raving mad and bonkers for High School Musical and Hannah Montana.

(Note she is good at sharing though and had let Ben run off with the microphone, so here she is with just the stand!)

Have you joined?

See here : http://www.shimelle.com/

I ordered my kit today. I am looking forward to this project, although I know I will never finish it. The notebook does look cute though. So I think I got the actual last one. Sorry for pointing it out and then catching the last one myself. Kinda feel pretty proud though as usually I ALWAYS miss out on these things.

I have a heap of LO's to upload here too. I have been very slack with it the past week... Half term and work are blamed for that plus a few submissions and stuff too.

Yesterday, this happened...

Emily just happened to sneak a yellow felt pen into the lounge. I did not see. Ben did though and since we have got away lightly with Emily (she has never crayon'd or drew on the walls) I knew that maybe we wouldn't be so lucky with Ben. Hmmm. Modern art?? Think not. Luckily it's a room we haven't decorated and luckily I was a nanny in a previous life, long ago that I am pretty mean at getting felt or crayon from walls. Yes, Kev did not even notice. He will now know tho, what happened here yesterday to make me in such a fluster and for felt pens to be 'banned' for like, forever.

I am using Emily's new easel to display these... it's alot easier to get that sunlight just right on it...

This one was just before she went bananas about not going on the 'happy apple' ride right there and then and having to do something that Ben would enjoy... Oh, boy... did we have tears!


This one doesn't photograph well, the patterns and colours all mingle... You can't quiet see the text at the bottom properly. You can barely see all the tiny, weenie flowers I cut out on it... But I do lurveeee this paper range!


This is made from super old, old, old stash. I guess it made it just more cooler that I thought it was because these papers i've had forever. The piccie was printed onto paper and then I hand glued (yes!) all those tiny, weenie, miniscule gems in a circle. Emily is in love with super hero's atm!
I thought these brass deers were pretty sweet... luv 'em? I do!

A chocolatey, easter egg face!

And a very, very snoozy boy!

P.S. Those leaves were stamped with the scrapagogo stamp set (March'08) and then cut out... on three diff shades of card/paper.

Back to normality.

Kev is back to work. I am at home with the kiddo's. I am already stressing about work next weekend. It seems to be a 'carer' you don't have to be caring at all. the stories I hear over the phone scare me. But still I do enjoy work alot, even though it's super, super busy and extra stressful. I actual thrive on that type of busy/stressy type of work.

I tried to create last night but my mind was mush. I need at least 8 hours sleep a night. This weekend I had 10 in total. I worked flat out. I got bitten to death by ants while doing a carer's job who 'couldn't be bothered' to. I have decided I hate ants. I need more storage for all my photos. I need to sort my scrap stuff as it's getting totally out of control right now. I need all my kits to arrive!

And keep your fingers crossed that some magic comes my way. xxx

Tool Boxes...

I made this with the MM noteworthy paper. It has a couple of acetate pages slipped in the little front and back cover pockets. It was a real neat little project!

And who'd of thought that a tool box contained scrapping supplies??? Yes, two of these super long screws provided good hinges for some hidden journo'ing and photos! Using a cropadile and ribbon they are just looped on.

Go look in your tool box for non-scrapping goodies to use! They are perfect for the cogsmo range :)

*Buy Me*

I had this sent to me, to be tried, used and tested:


And I made this, along with a lot of other things and it's still going strong! (I did this with my March Scrapagogo which too is going strong)



How many rolls of double sided sticky tape or glue runners do you get through a month? Me: Too many! This runner is a fabby little thing though! I can say that i've had no problems with it, it's easy to use and doesn't need heaps of pressure like some adhesive rollers do. I kept the packaging to put it back into each time because it doesn't have a lid so I ran the risk of everything being sticky in my tote if I didn't :) and you don't need a degree to get into it either :) It come out in little lines so it is super perfect for little cut outs/die cuts etc... AND I really enjoyed having hardly any mess to clear away after I had finished my projects. I never realised how much mess double sided tape creates!!

Would I buy another one? YES! I'm always ok with adhesive rollers unti you have to refil, well this one isn't refillable so no probs there. I'd love it to have a lid. Just so I can pop it in my tote without repackaging but hey, it's not a whinge. This product is great!

Phew!

Another pic of our day out ~ As you can see Em loved the carousel!

My mega work weekend is over ~ Well, this weekend anyhow. Next weekend i'm on 6:30am til 4pm both days but it's not so bad as Kev is still on half term so I get alittle break with the kiddos.

I also am waiting on kits! 3x Soml, 1x Studio Calico and 1x Scrapagogo. I also have a few important submissions to get in and some work to send to be photographed (yay! Good, good news there!) I have a nice little DT cheque to be cashed, which I love doing because it's what I love so much *AND* I get paid to do it :) And then Kev is taking Emily into London on Thursday, she is amazed that the Queen lives there (I think she thought the Queen was make believe) and he said he may take her to the aquarium. So on Thursday Benji and I will have a nice quiet day at home together.

I had a little giggle today though, as Kev got some new shoes last week. This morning he complained that one was tight and one loose. I suggested that maybe one had been tried on lots and stretched. No! One was a size 8 and one a size 9 :lol: This made me laugh lots and lots and lots :)

We have our nephew staying tonight, so i'll be having a huge scrap filled evening as Kev and him will be on the xbox and Wii allllllll night long.

We have a new addition to our family...

Meet Nibbles.

We went and picked him up on Monday and he is settling in well, he's still alittle jumpy at the kids (especially when we have a full blown tantrum going on) but he is a sweet little inquisitive thing. And Emily is constantly peeking in at him.

Yesterday we went to Old Macdonalds farm over in Brentwood (or where ever it is)... Emily not only now is mad on animals but also rides. She went on the 'happy apple' rollercoaster approx 5 times... And she would've stayed on all day if we had let her. She rode the carousel 4 times (at least) and the train a couple of times.

This little boy had a great time too... He enjoyed running away from me in the huge sandpit the most, I think :)

And I have work all weekend (a mega long 14.5 hour shift) and then splits on Sunday, so I won't be around.

xxx happy halfterm and enjoy the weather! xxx